Aaron, I agree with your major objective: We need to make this City a place
where we all can live.

But, your modest proposal is too modest.  It corresponds pretty much to
existing conditions.  The major flaw in your plan and the principal
injustice in the current situation is precisely that it leaves enforcement
of the law up to the police officer.  This makes enforcement arbitrary and
capricious.  If a police officer doesn't like your looks, he/she can bust
you.  There is no equal justice under the law because black people always
look more threatening to white police than other white people do: driving
while black, walking while black, talking back while black, etc.  But the
enforcement is even more a crime against class than it is a racially biased
crime.  If you're poor, you do it in the street.  If you're not, you do it
in your suite.  In either case, enforcement of existing laws allows the
just-us system to scapegoat the least powerful and the most vulnerable in
our society.

No.

This cannot be done piecemeal.  We as a society must recognize what is wrong
here, and we must end it at once and with one voice.

Ed Felien
Powderhorn


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